Album Review: Taylor Acorn - Poster Child

I often refer back to Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" album as being an inflection point, as it was the perfect synthesis of 00s pop and rock. That formula was a winner, as the record sold millions and spawned some of the biggest singles of the time, but it's one that hasn't been followed very often or very well since. Perhaps it is merely a culture that has moved on to other things, or perhaps writing songs sticky enough is harder than even I imagine, but pop music has rarely been able to capture the rock energy and deliver on the music that can bridge the gap.

I say that as preface to this statement; Taylor Acorn may have just come closer than anyone to making the "Breakaway" for the next generation.

From top to bottom, "Poster Child" is absolutely jam-packed with massive hooks and smoothly crunchy guitars. In many places, her voice even takes on the same smoky hue as Clarkson's. When she starts the album off telling us "you're pissing me off", it isn't hard to hear it as a cousin to the attitude in "Since U Been Gone". The song goes on to talk about the sad habit of prioritizing other people's happiness above our own, which only works if you prescribe to a submissive lifestyle. For everyone else, it becomes a difficult cycle of self-torture where we try to please people without knowing how, and not reminding ourselves that no one can possibly please everyone.

And perhaps that revelation is the reason this record is able to exist. If Taylor was trying to please everyone, she would not be making an album with a throwback sound to her youth (and my 20s - wait, I'm that old now?), and she certainly wouldn't be trying to shake free of the genre silos we currently suffocate in. This record isn't pop, yet it is. This record isn't rock, yet it is. This record isn't pop/punk, yet it is.

In "Hangman", Taylor sings about the children's game, which is a fitting metaphor here. The game had no rules of how many pieces we had to re-articulate to put enough weight on the answer to break its neck, and there are no rules for what Taylor is doing here. This record is not focus-tested and aimed squarely at a ready audience, it sounds like her love letter to the music she remembers and wants to embody. That alone makes it exciting, when so much feels done for the sake of being done.

There are other moments on the record where Taylor's vocals sound a lot like that other Taylor we all know, except she is not putting on an act as an artifice to distract us from the deteriorating quality of the prose. What Taylor inadvertently does is use her voice to take us on a bit of a journey through the evolution of pop over the last twenty years, which at least to my mind points out how much life has been sucked out of the enterprise.

Taylor sings that she's the "poster child for screwing up", but whatever mistakes may have been made in life have been worth it to wind up here. If the saying goes that 'comedy is tragedy plus time', that would mean art is pain plus time. Enough has passed that Taylor's life has been pressurized into this gem of a record. Which color gets refracted will depend on the angle you look at it from, but from my perspective this is nearly the entire rainbow arcing toward that pot of gold.

Taylor Swift set records a few weeks ago with the release of "The Life Of A Showgirl", but she no longer has the best release from a Taylor this year. Taylor Acorn has reached into the recent past, and used rock to smash through the ennui of this year. "Poster Child" is one of the best records of the year, and the best example of what pop music can still be that I've heard in years. There's a chance it grows roots and becomes the best such album since "Breakaway".

Need I say more?